Pompeii
by BlazingLegend
Summary: She shatters like glass in his arms. /for kayla.


For the lovely and loving lady Kayla. I've been pulling double-shifts and all-nighters trying to get this up in time, but I did it. This is just my ugly first draft so don't be startled if it's utterly horrifying. Involves some canon plots, but mostly AU.

* * *

><p>It starts with the bleeding orange that is the Manhattan skyline as the dawn of a new day approaches the ungodly hour of two am.<p>

She takes the time to admire him.

The way he sits, the manner in which he breathes, the very essence of all that _is_ Barney Stinson.

She takes her time. She gazes at him, through him, putting him under her microscope; the way his shoulders slope and he spreads his legs and just like everything about him, it's mutedly sexual in nature. How his gaze courts the crowd of busty dullards off the graveyard shift with a keen eye and all the arrogance of an untamed phoenix.

The angles of his features; the slope of his face, the arch of his cheekbones, the chiselled out marble that his looks have called home. She knows he's beautiful, he knows it too. That has to be at least seventy percent of where his arrogance comes from—she guesses the other thirty is put down to his sexual prowess, imagined or not.

But as she examines the canvas of his body, she can't help but think it probably isn't a figment of his imagination.

He presses his tumbler to his lips and downs the amber contents in a half second swig.

"Scherbatsky," he says, he's slurring, his words are tumbling out from under him and soaring off clumsy into the stale air between them, "You're a great bro."

She leans her head back into the seat, watching the ceiling tip up to meet her, massaging two fingers into her temples.

Her eyes flash back onto him; he's surveying her, studying her just as she's done with him, and she thinks that perhaps, if anything, they've met their match in each other. "Bro, huh?"

He nods; his tongue rides over his lips, which have become more cracked as it got later into the night.

He rubs a hand against his collarbone. "Bro. There you go."

Her voice lights with fire.

"And that's it?"

He frowns; his eyes roll over her, over every part of her, peering into every fracture and crack he can find.

Searching her for an answer, as if she has one within her. "Well... you're pretty hot... really hot... but yeah."

To remind him that's not all she is, she stares him down, makes sure he's looking at her and no one else, and she starts sliding a foot up his pant leg.

His skin jerks away from her, his eyes flash wonders at her, his eyebrows lift into his hairline.

His reaction fades off into one of his Barney Stinson smirks.

"I like the way you play, Scherbatsky."

She arches a brow. "Oh yeah?"

He licks his lips. "Yeah."

Now he's completely focused on her, his eyes don't have room for anyone else; she feels his hot gaze spreading through her, filling a need that she never knew was there.

What's that thing Ted always says? Nothing good happens after two am?

Robin Scherbatsky never has been a woman for wives tales.

* * *

><p>Her smile cracks hollow in her cheeks.<p>

Ted slips a hand round her waist as she slides in beside him and into the booth. He pulls her close. "Hey, sweetheart."

She leans into his kiss, two fingers pulling on his collar. "Hey."

"Oh God, you guys, get a room," Barney says, his face contorting, raising his hands in front of his eyes. "I feel like I want to hang myself. If you don't stop with the... the... the _desecration_ of this booth, then I swear to God I will."

"You do that," Ted says, "We'll be right here, watching."

"Don't be so hard on him," she says, giving Ted a small poke to the shoulder.

Barney smirks. "Well thank you, Robin." He says, and eyes Ted. "At least _someone_ here is on my side."

She gives Barney a wink that fortunately for her, Ted doesn't see. She mirrors the arrogance that she finds in his smirk. "Yeah. He's been striking out all night."

"Robin!" Barney whines, "Why can't you ever just for once be cool? For once? Be cool. For once. That's all I'm asking. Once. God."

She snorts at him; it takes a few more moments of pouting before he's grinning straight at her again.

(It's not like he could ever stop.)

Ted presses a round of kisses to her cheek and jawline before hopping up again with the steady proclamation of, "I'll go get us some more drinks."

And with Ted no longer there to draw her attention off the places it never shoulder have gone in the first place, she can't help it. She looks over at him.

(Not to her surprise, he's staring straight back.)

He throws her a lopsided smile, his teeth flashing golden in her direction, and the memories start to bleed back to her. Fractured pictures that swirl and fade away in front of her eyes, spinning at her through a whirl of drunkenness and the echoes of his heightened laughter.

_"I like the way you play, Scherbatsky."_

She makes sure he knows the point she's getting at, the toe of her flats arching up against the skin of his lower leg.

She pulls herself out of the booth and for a moment the entire world tilts underneath her feet and she clutches the table for support.

His arms find her waist. _"Hey. You're okay."_

Her hands find his skin.

_"You're right,"_ he breathes, his hands moving further up her body, inhaling every part of her.

Her fingers are on his lapels and pulling them closer together, _"You're more than just a bro."_

She smiles up at him, and his hands cradle her jaw.

_"That's what I thought."_

Her fingers loop underneath his tie and she tugs him closer and kisses him, hard.

_"Scherbatsky..."_

She pulls away and seals three fingers shut over his lips.

_"No talking allowed."_

He can only murmur his agreement.

She blinks out of her own remembered delusion.

She shakes her head, a little, and breathes. It's the breathing that's the important part.

Now Barney's looking at her from the opposite side of the booth and that lovely lopsided smile of his has turned to one of concern. "Distracted?"

Her teeth cut into her lower lip. "Yeah."

He leans forward, ever so slightly, and his scent drifts with him. "You okay?"

She nods. "Yeah."

Of course, she has to remember—she has to—this happened over a year ago and of course it's lunacy to think anything other than he's forgotten.

But as his eyes cling to her frame and linger on all his favourite parts of her, she thinks maybe she can't be so lucky.

* * *

><p>On one Thursday morning a month later, she wakes up early and goes running through the streets of New York City.<p>

The fresh air of a new day clings to her, seeping into the fabric of her clothes and anchoring itself to her skin. Her breath smoulders out in the form of lopsided rounds of smoke, the cold settling into her bones.

Sounds knife into her from all directions; taxis speeding through the streets, passengers screaming profanities at aforementioned taxis, dogs barking as they pull against their leads.

By this point she's running all out, with everything she has, buildings whirring past her vision and blurring in with the paved cobblestones.

So naturally she doesn't notice the uneven slip in the pavement, her heels catch on it, and she staggers.

She falls.

She coughs out a strangled cry and pulls herself out of the way of the foot traffic, pulling her knees close to her and watching blood cascade down from the tear in the fabric of her skin.

"_Fuck._"

She wipes the hair out of her eyes.

She's only ever hurt herself a handful of times, as many times as she can count on her fingers—not including hockey injuries, of course—but her own self-diagnosed status of being a tough bitch was never going to hide her from her own stupid, human insecurities and the fact that her body is much more fragile than she should allow herself to be.

She stands up and almost trips on her own weight.

She's too busy trying not to limp and avoiding the eyes of people who may stare.

So naturally she doesn't notice him until she notices him and he's ramming into her head on.

She skitters backward a few jagged paces, pressing a hand against her chest, ignoring the sheaths of hair falling back down her face, "Barney?"

His face twists into a scowl and his temples flare as he registers the collision, but as soon as he sets his hazy-eyed sights on her, his face softens into something of a smile. "Robin? It's you."

She tries to slow the beating of that messy organ that holds residence in the hollow of her chest.

(She'd rip it out if she could.)

She rolls her eyes at him and combs her fringe back out of the way again. "What are you doing here so early?" she pauses. "Or... so late?"

He waves off her questions. "Oh, you know me. I love the nightlife."

She's not stupid, she knows he's not giving her straight answers, and by the twitching muscle underneath his haze of ocean eyes, she thinks—no, she's sure—he knows it too.

But she lets it go.

For a second she only smiles at him, admiring the way the sun reflects itself in his eyes and slopes off his cheekbones and how every breath from his lips looks like dragon smoke, and how she thinks he may just be fitting of such a title.

That's when he drops to his knees in front of her, and any and all attempts to steady her heartrate fall to ruin.

"You been in a knife fight, Scherbatsky?" he says, his voice tinged with his trademark brand of arrogance, but also tilted into something she detects as absurd as _concern_ for her.

She rakes her nails along her thigh to replace the thought with pain.

He looks back up at her, eyes flashing different shades of crystal in her direction. "Knife fights are hot." He says. He pauses, mouth pinching, "Unless you're in one. Or, you know... you get knifed."

He looks back into her eyes; she looks away. "Knife fights aren't really that hot, are they, Scherbatsky?"

She can't help but smile. It's stupid, really. "No, they aren't."

"Damn." He mutters. "That's a little disappointing."

"Well, I'm sorry to have disappointed you, Barney." She says. She combs a hand through her hair. "God. Get back up here. I'm getting some serious porno vibes right now."

His head tilts upward and he flashes her a grin, licking his lips. "Are you now?"

She snorts at him. "I said up, Stinson," she repeats, and extends a hand.

He brushes the offer off and gets up on his own terms.

He starts looking her up and down again, and with his eyes roaming her body, her chest goes tight again.

It's like he's only just noticed that she's out of breath.

Like he's only now registering the trail of sweat from her collarbone seeping down in between her breasts, her flushed expression that she puts entirely down to the physical exertion and not the way his eyes take in her entire frame and don't miss a single thing.

(And she doesn't think about how terrifying that is. Not at all.)

He takes a step back from her, a laughing breath stumbling out from behind his lips. "So how'd you get that war wound of yours?"

"Running. Tripped. Fell."

He arches a brow. "Really?" he says, his voice resonating with a hint of arrogance, maybe, or something of his that's only his that makes her feel tipsy inside, "Wouldn't have taken you for a faller, Scherbatsky."

"Oh, I fall all the time, Barney." She says, the words somehow blooming from her lips like bitter scents on the tip of her tongue.

"Do you now?"

And that word floats back again.

_Dragon._

"Barney..."

She doesn't know what this is. She doesn't know what they're doing. She's doesn't know what _he's_ done to her to make her feel like the rest of the world has faded to silence and she and him are the only two people in the world and she's never cared about anything else.

She doesn't know how she could be this stupid.

"I'm with Ted."

He laughs; she wonders how it can be so easy. "You don't think I know that by now, Scherbatsky?"

"Right," the words spit out before she can stop them, harsh and unorganised and almost painful and she doesn't know why, she never knows why, "Right. Of course. That was..." she tries at this laughing thing he seems to be good at, and fails. "That was a stupid thing to say."

"Scherbatsky," he says, giving her a little pout she supposes is meant in empathy, "Come on." He leans into her, and she breathes in his scent and every part of him; soap and cologne and the deep aroma of scotch that has somehow become a part of him, "Don't be so gloomy. It's okay to say something stupid once and a while."

He straightens, and she starts to miss his eyes. "In fact, I think I'd say it's healthy."

She tries at this laughing thing again; she manages a strangled sound, but however clumsy she is he still laughs, tilts his head, and smiles at her.

He traces a finger along the arch of her cheekbone. "Do _you_ know you're with Ted?"

It seems an innocent enough question, and knowing him it's meant in nothing but jest.

But somehow it worms its way into her bloodstream and settles in too close to her heart, sinking down into the cracks in her skin and she laughs and pushes him away, just like she's supposed to.

Later that day, when Ted greets her with a kiss and is all too quick to inquire in on her war wound, she searches for Barney's eyes in the room and when she fails, she just puts a hand on Ted's shoulder, shakes her head, and tells him it's nothing.

As the evening he progresses she somehow winds up stuck with Barney in the kitchen. He's following orders from Lily about getting another bottle of wine and she's following similar orders over stacking the dishwasher.

"Scherbatsky," he says, and offers her a small nod of his head. His eyes roam down her body, fixing in on her kneecap. "How's the leg? You a pirate yet?"

It takes her longer than it should to get the joke—and it's a bad joke, at that—but after a few moments of him blinking at her, she shakes her head, smiles a little, "Barney, you don't have to worry about me. I'm a Scherbatsky. We pull through."

He tilts his head at her, throwing the wine bottle from hand to hand with a little bit of flourish, arrogance, as is typical Barney style. She hopes he drops it. "I don't doubt it."

He helps her with the rest of the dishes when she makes a point of saying he doesn't have to and promptly walks out.

"Good morrow, mere mortals. Your salvation is here."

She can hear the annoyance in Lily's voice, "Just hand the bottle over and stop talking, okay? Okay."

Skip ahead three weeks later and she's almost forgotten their encounter on the stairs of the apartment and she dares to think he's almost forgotten about it too.

Skip ahead three weeks and she's throwing an arm around his shoulders and he's leaning into her with one hand pressed against her waist as Lily snaps a group picture of all of them.

Of course she's not the first to pull away, he is, and when he does and she watches him lumber off to go buy another round of drinks for the bunch of them with a double shot of ten year old scotch for him, she would almost miss it but she doesn't and that when it happens.

He turns around, tilts his head at her, and flashes her a grin.

Ted doesn't see—thank God Lily doesn't—and she's pretty sure she's the only one who does, and for that, at least, she is glad.

When he slides back in beside her in the booth, his thigh presses against hers for the barest of seconds and she almost drops her drink.

He shoots a glance over in her direction. "Everything okay, Scherbatsky?"

She swallows her pride along with the fire that's risen to her cheeks. "Mm. Fine."

And she thinks about how she never did like dragons.

* * *

><p>Skip ahead two years later and he's showing up on her doorstep after three weeks of not seeing him at all.<p>

"Scherbatsky!" he's beaming, all for her, "Happy birthday."

The lights from inside her apartment shine down on him, turning his smile radioactive, glowing with flashes of silver and golden.

"Barney? You... remembered my birthday?"

"Well yeah!" he says, his voice echoing with giddiness, and for a second and a second only she sees him, Barney, as a curly-haired youngster running around with firecrackers, his honey blonde hair singing against the sunlight.

She smiles. Says, softly, "I can't believe you remembered."

"Of course I did," he says, frowning for a second, tilting his head at her, "I couldn't ever forget anything about you."

She nods her head to the inside of her apartment, "Do you... want to come in?"

He looks at her for a moment, eyes widening at the offer, and finally he says, voice shaking, "Uh—uhm, yeah. I would. I'd like that."

"Then come on in," she says, and as he follows her inside he rests a hand on the small of her back, and she feels his touch radiate out to the rest of her body.

"So," she says as she's pouring him a glass of wine, "What's with the radio silence, Stinson? Have you been cheating on me with twenty-two year olds again?"

"Hey," he says, his chest puffing out, pointing a finger at her, "I have at no point in this relationship, cheated on you. I went out suit shopping with that twenty-two year old once, and it was only so I could talk up Ted. Plus she gave me a twenty percent discount on suits!"

"Fine, fine," she says, sitting down beside him. She smiles, "Don't worry, I know you'd never cheat on me."

He clinks his glass against hers, laughing. "I wouldn't ever want to. You're the hottest platonic relationship I've ever had."

"I thought no one was ever strictly platonic?"

The question seems to catch him off guard.

But only for a second.

He shrugs and takes a sip from his glass, "Oh well. I've kind of dumped that theory. Platonish just sounds weird now, after seeing how things turned out with us."

She looks over at him. "And what do you mean by that?"

He shrugs again, and she notices how a muscle in his jaw starts to twitch, and he's not looking at her anymore. "It means maybe I'd believe it with you and Ted, with, you know, you and him being... _you and him..._ but not with us. Not anymore, at least."

"Barney. Did I say something?"

He shakes his head, still staring into his glass. "Nope. But c'mon, Scherbatsky," he flashes her one small glance and actually manages to look her in the eye, "I'm not going to get you down, not on your birthday."

"Hey, this is what I'm here for," she says, setting her glass down on the table, "I'm your therapy guy, remember? Spill."

"No can do," he says, pinning her with a smirk that's all kinds of taunting, "Not tonight. This lip is zipped. Tight."

"You—" she says, giving his tie a light, playful pull, "—are no fun."

"Oh, I can assure you I'm all kinds of fun, Scherbatsky," he says, and starts to grin, eyes glowing.

She almost doesn't catch it as his eyes flash away from her again and he mutters to himself, "Just not with you."

"Okay, Barney, seriously," she says, and scoots a little closer to him, "You've been acting really weird around me lately. Please tell me what I did."

She sets a hand on top of his knee. He stares at it for a while.

"You didn't do anything," he says, softly, a whisper, "You didn't do anything at all."

"Then what's wrong?"

He pulls away from her, stands up, and brushes himself off. "Well," he says, "I'd better be going."

She swivels her body so she can watch him as he tries to leave. "Barney. You literally just got here."

He grabs a coat she has no idea when he took off, and is halfway out the door when he turns back and says, "Go look in your bottom desk draw. And don't ask how I got into your apartment. You're not ready."

Then he leaves her behind in his dust.

After a few seconds of sitting, staring at her faded carpet, she gets up and goes to do what he asked.

Inside that bottom desk draw is a full expenses paid return ticket back to Canada for her birthday.

She smiles.

* * *

><p>She goes on that trip to Canada.<p>

"You're back! How was it?" Lily beams at her as she returns to their regular booth at MacLaren's, and Robin can't help but think her smile doesn't nearly live up to Barney's.

"Really freaking cold," Robin says with a laugh. "New York's made me soft."

Lily snorts. "You should go talk to Barney."

Robin goes through her purse looking for an unused tube of lipstick, "Why?"

Lily shrugs, and Robin sees cherry flavoured colouring rise to her friend's cheeks. "Because he missed you, that's why."

Robin laughs. "Really? The great and impervious to the full spectrum of human emotion Barney Stinson missed _me?_"

Lily looks down into her hands, apparently now fascinated with the green nail polish adorning her fingers.

Robin eyes her. She leans across the table. "Okay, spill it, Red. What's going on with Barney?"

"What?" she yelps, "I didn't say anything."

"You didn't need to," she says. "Come on. What did he say?"

Lily's eyes slowly lift to hers. "What? Is it a crime for him to miss you? Is it a crime for a strictly platonic friend to notice the absence of his other strictly platonic friend?" she stops. "... platonically?"

"You just said platonic a lot."

"Pssh. _Nah._"

Robin sighs and hurriedly slides out of the booth. "I need to go."

Lily looks at her, eyebrows creasing. "Where?"

"I need to go talk to Barney," she says, sighing.

"Woo!"

Robin jerks back a little, eyes going wide, "What the hell was that?"

"That was my outside woo!" she pauses. "And I now realise that we are most certifiably not outside. Whoops."

Lily catches Carl's dark eyes glaring over at her from the bar. "Sorry, Carl!" she says.

Carl eyes her. "Inside woo, Lily! _Inside woo._"

But by this time Robin's gone.

* * *

><p>Barney opens the door for her.<p>

"_Robin,_" he breathes, his dragon eyes taking in every part of her, "You're back."

"Yeah. Lily said—"

He cuts her off, his warm arms roping her into a hug.

He presses his face against her neck, murmuring into her hair. "I missed you."

She lets out a short laugh as her own arms find their way around him. "Yeah," she says. "I missed you too."

He pulls back and gazes down at her, and she sees things flickering underneath his eyes that she's only seen a handful of times before. "Robin?"

She plays with his tie to get her mind off just who's hands are at her waist, and thinks of how she may not be any better off. "Yeah?"

He leans into her and their lips connect, for the barest of seconds.

She blinks at him, and she's not breathing, not anymore.

She steps away, his face turns cold. "Uhm—Barney?—uh, I should go, I really should—leave,"

She sees his eyes cloud, but not before a lightning strike of pain flashes through them. "Yes. Sure. You do that."

She does.

* * *

><p>Of course, now it's raining.<p>

Three weeks later, and now it's raining.

He shows up on her doorstep, drunk out of his skull, murmuring warm things at her, his breath showering her with drifts of cheap liquor and spring winds.

"Robin?"

Against her better judgement, she takes a step froward, puts a hand on his shoulder. "You okay?"

"Robin," he repeats, his voice cracking, a broken record. "Robin."

"Do you... want to come inside?" she says, her voice wavering over the syllables she speaks, "Have a, uhm... cup of coffee?"

"_Robin._"

"Yes?"

"Robin. I miss you."

_Fuck._

She shuffles a step back, she's not touching him anymore. "You..." her voice flutters, "You... what?"

"I miss you. So much. It hurts. I don't..."

She shakes her head, takes another step and a half back. Cards her fingers through her hair, "Look, Barney, you're drunk. You don't know what the hell you're saying. You don't mean any of this."

"I do know what the hell I'm saying, thank you, _Robin,_" he says, his voice cut with sharp edges but still filled with warm things, "I know exactly what I'm saying. I love you, Robin."

"Fuck," she mutters. She looks back into his eyes; they're clouded over with intoxication, but something flashes blue beneath them, something that makes a shot of white crack through her body. "Barney, I can't do this right now! I can't. Go home. Get a cab. Talk to Ted. Talk to Lily. Talk to anyone. Just not me."

"You've turned me into Ted," he says. "I blame you for all of this."

She coughs. "What?"

"I," he steps closer, "Blame," trails a finger along her jaw, "_You._"

He kisses her.

His arms twist around her, fingers in her hair, lips on her neck, teeth bruising her skin.

"Robin. I love you."

She groans at the places his hands find and tugs his jacket off, pulling on his tie. "Just take your fucking clothes off,"

He laughs against her skin and they tumble back onto her bed together.

* * *

><p>Eight months later and she wishes she was completely sober, she really does.<p>

Otherwise she wouldn't be running a hand over his chest, leaning into his ear, "Tell me one thing,"

He flashes a warm murmur back at her, "And what is that, Scherbatsky?"

He has a hand on her waist, and she's leaning over his body to hiss at him, "Do you love me even a little bit anymore?"

A strangely Lily-sounding voice pipes up in the back of her head, _There you go, honey! He's not answering. This is good. This is great. He wants to say no, but he can't, because he's still in love with you. You don't fall out of love in eight months. Not real love._

"No."

Fuck you, Lily-sounding Lily.

And it's now she realises that his hands aren't on her skin, she's not breathing anything at him, she's only blinking at him as she sits on the opposite side of the booth from him, and he's staring at her with a single eyebrow arched.

She's just a silly little girl in a tattered dress with too many things she still needs to learn who is so out of her depth for even the stars to save her now.

"Does that bother you, Robin?"

She rolls her eyes at him; they get stuck halfway. "No. Of course not. It's not like I ever wanted this."

He shrugs, and he's not even owing her the respect of looking at her straight. "Good, then."

He pauses. "I mean, yeah, I still care about you."

"You still love me?"

"_Loved,_" he says, raising a finger. "Past tense. I said I care about you. Nothing else."

She snorts, "Romantic."

"I thought romantic isn't what you wanted."

She shakes her head and stares at her empty scotch glass. "It's not. It's really not."

"Good, because if you ever do want that again, then you know Ted's number."

And she feels every hope within her shot down in the space of a second.

Her heart drums against her ribcage, her breath stops behind her lips, all the colours in the room turn to a washed out shade of grey.

Her heart turns to stone, and it stays that way for a while.

* * *

><p>Over a year later, and he's with Quinn now.<p>

She laughs against his throat as he pulls her into her apartment and sets her down on her bed.

He stares down at her for a few seconds too long, "Robin, I..." he cards a hand through his hair, his eyes are raking over her body, "I should probably get going."

She reaches out for him and tugs him closer by the loops in his belt. "I am really drunk right now."

He moves her hand away from dangerous places. "I know that," he says, smiling a little, "So let's get you into bed so you can sleep it off, okay?"

"Why don't you get into bed with me?"

He blinks at her. He doesn't speak for at least a minute.

He whispers, "_What?_"

"You know exactly what I said, Barney."

He takes a step back from her, like she's radioactive. She very well may be.

"Robin."

"Yeah?"

"No."

She stands up, and almost falls again, and he anchors his hands on her waist to keep her upright.

She starts to loosen his tie.

"Robin, please. You don't know what you're saying."

She knows she wants his lips doing things she's almost forgotten and his skin burning against hers.

And he's still holding her.

She kisses him, hard, her fingers moving to his collar, managing to unbutton his shirt in the time it takes for him to regain some sense of sanity and push himself off of her.

"Robin, we really shouldn't—"

She moves her hands over his mouth.

"Shh. No talking allowed."

Her hands move to undo his belt and he moans out her name. "Robin, please. You don't know what you're _saying._"

She breaks herself off of him and slaps him straight across the face.

"Don't you dare say those words to me, you bastard."

He grabs her by the arms, and impossibly, his voice is still soft, "_Robin._"

And even in the dim light, she can see the imprint she's left on his cheek.

"What?" she says, her face close to his, "What more could you have to take?"

She watches him watching her. "I may be fuck drunk, Barney, but I remember saying those _exact_ words to you when you knocked on my door over a year ago wanting an easy screw."

"Robin," he says, and for the first time in that evening something flares beneath his voice, smoking, smouldering, "That is _not_ what I wanted. That's not what I wanted and you know it."

"Bullshit!" she says, "And this is because you were _so_ in love with me? That's bullshit."

"You said you didn't want me," he whispers, "You said you didn't want any of that."

"Fuck you."

He pulls her off of him and turns away. "I'm leaving."

She doesn't know how it happens, all she knows is the vase on her bedside table is now exploding off the wall, inches away from the back of his head.

"Don't you think you can just fucking leave me! Don't you _dare._"

He turns around, slowly.

"Robin. Calm down."

"And why the hell should I do that, Barney?" she spits, "I don't want to calm down. I want _you._ You're all I've ever fucking wanted. Now tell me. Why should I calm down?"

"Robin," his face turns panicked, she doesn't know why, "Please. Calm down," he takes three strides closer, "You're bleeding."

That's when she sees it. Her wrists, cut from the glass, bleeding down onto her clothes and the rest of her body and now him, because he's pulling her close to him and hissing frantic, pleading things in her ear.

She doesn't remember the rest of the night.

* * *

><p>She slides in next to Lily.<p>

Her eyes go big. "Holy shit."

Robin looks at her. "What?"

"What happened to you?" Lily leans over and reaches for her hands, tracing a finger along the inside of her wrist. "Where did you get those... _those..._ uhm... scars?"

"A stupid decision," she mutters. "That's where I got them. A really stupid decision."

"What stupid decision?"

Lily never gets her answer.

* * *

><p>She sees him in the street, four months later, and this time she decides she's going to try and play by the rules.<p>

"Oh, hey!" she says, "Hey. Good to see you. How's it going?"

"It's going good. Great to see you too. Yeah!"

"Barney—"

"Robin—"

She laughs and takes a step back, nodding her head at him. "You go first."

He's not looking at her, and it frightens her, for a second and only that. "I broke up with Quinn. I just thought you should know."

Well, he's breaking the rules, now.

"Uhm, okay... mind if I ask why?"

Now she's breaking them too.

"Why do you think, Scherbatsky?"

He hasn't called her that in a long time.

"You. We broke up because of you."

She rubs a hand along her jaw, sighing. "Brilliant."

He frowns. "What do you mean?"

"Well, Barney, what do _you_ think I mean?" she fires back, "You're not stupid. Either that or you're incredibly stupid. Which is it?"

He crosses his arms. "Oh, so we haven't seen each other in weeks—"

"Months."

"—I'm sorry, _months,_ and now all you have to give me is insults to my intelligence?"

"What did you think I was going to say, Barney?" she says. "This isn't a fucking romance movie. It's not raining. We're not in... I don't know, a barn. What do you expect? A shitty 90's love song to start playing, and me falling into your welcome embraces? Bullshit."

"Of course that's not—"

"This is real life, Barney. I'm not going to come running back to you saying I love you. Not when I don't. You shouldn't have broken up with Quinn because of me. I am not going to come back to you."

"Well, believe me," he says, scoffing, "I don't want you back. You're a bitch."

"Oh my God, that hurts so much," she says, rolling her eyes, "I don't care what you think of me. I'm done with those days. I'm done with you. I'm not going to love you, I'm not going to marry you, I'm not going to have your children. Quinn was someone you could have married. I'm not."

"Why are you always doing this?" he spits.

Her jaw sets. "Always doing what?"

"Why are you always leaving me?"

"I'm sorry," she says, and despite her knowing better, her chest starts to flare, "But _what_ did you just say?"

"You—" he says, and gestures a hand at her, "—are always leaving me."

She doesn't know what he's doing, what he's doing to her. "You've left me literally a thousand times! You've screwed me over, you've hurt me, you have _left me_ when I _needed you._"

His head turns in her direction again. His eyebrows lift. "I hurt you?"

She dodges his stares, wishing she could do the same with his words. "Of course you did. You've fucking killed me. I don't even know why I'm here. I don't know why I'm still wasting my breath with you."

"You've... never told me that before."

"Well fuck, Barney." She says. "Maybe it's because I'm so special, so fragile, something worth saving. I don't need saving. Not by you."

"I know that. I've always known that," he mutters, loud enough so she hears, and she knows it isn't a mistake. "You're your own daddy, you're your own mommy, you're your own weird survivalist uncle who lives in the woods blaming stuff on the government," he says, and his eyes lift to hers, and she swears for the half second that she allows herself to care, it hurts like hell.

"That's what I always _loved_ about you. You're not some damsel in distress. You're Robin Scherbatsky. You'd save yourself from that tower and you'd die trying before you'd let someone else save you."

And it hurts like hell, for the fraction of a second that she actually cares at all.

She shakes her head and steps even further back from him. "We're not a song, we're not anything special, we don't stand out at all. We're just two people who fucked things up. That's it. Nothing else."

"So _this_ is how you're leaving things between us, Robin?" he says.

"Oh, fuck you. You're trying to blame this all on me. Because I'm always the problem. That's fucking great," she says, and tries not to look him directly in the face, "Thank you for proving everything I've ever thought of you. Thank you for proving me right."

"I'm not blaming you. You're just looking for another reason to run away," he says in a dark voice. "You're always running away."

She claps her hands at him, air reverberating with the sarcasm of that sound. "Oh, now we're getting to the good stuff. Now we're getting to what you really think of me. This is great, keep going."

"I think you're broken," he says, "That's what I think of you. And I think you know you're broken. I think you're trying to get away from me because I made you think that for a second, maybe you weren't."

She just arches a brow at him. "Is that all you got?"

His face twists, and eventually just goes cold.

"Goodbye, Robin."

He blends in with the sunlight as he walks away, and eventually, he disappears completely.

It's rain that follows in his wake. She blinks against her own starry eyes and mascara stains and the memories of their shared delusions, and she starts off walking.

She pulls her jacket up over her head, and wonders why she didn't bring an umbrella.


End file.
